rowan

Very well done, LB!

No, there's nothing under "Update". I'll have another play with it later on as I'm at work at the moment!

I thought that not all accepted into RBS Upper School auditioned in the formal sense. I'm sure I've read of some who have been seen at a summer school and were just invited to the Upper School and didn't have to audition. Also, don't some of the big international competitons have prizes where the prize is a place at the RBS or a place at another top school?

I've clicked the little arrow and up comes a box saying "What's on your mind?" with another box undeneath it saying "Update". I'm clearly doing something wrong!

Am feeling stupid here - I'm in the wrong time zone and I don't know where the drop-down menu is for My Settings. I've clicked around to no avail...

There's been so much discussion about different training methods and Tomuchtallent's recent comment on the RBS thread about a short TV clip about White Lodge has made me wonder what films are available about different ballet schools and their training. As this isn't strictly a Doing Dance subject, it might be better placed elsewhere in this forum, but I thought it might be of more interest to the Doing Dancers. Moderators, move it if you think it should go elsewhere! Some of these are available on YouTube. Paris Opera Ballet School: "Les Enfants de la Danse" Bolshoi School: anything and everything uploaded by Ilya Kuznetzov -ilyaballet on YouTube. Vaganova School: "The Children of Theatre Street" / exam classes uploaded by various people Perm School: "A Beautiful Tragedy" What other documentaries are there? There must be more than this. Is there anything on the RBS, more than just short news items? To my very untutored eye there's a difference in training between POB school and the Russian schools. POB school seems to emphasise vivacity and rapidity of movement and the Russian schools work very slowly, emphasising strength and control.

While I agree with most of Aileen's list, I'm not so sure about either point 2 or some of point 4. 2: If you set aside much of the former Soviet bloc, the majority of foreign children (I suppose I mean American/Japanese) will be wealthy enough to afford huge numbers of ballet lessons and pay for home schooling if they're not at vocational school, although no doubt some will be on scholarships. They will also be paying out huge sums to enter the big competitions like YAGP, which are viewed as important for "being seen" . 4: The Guardian article did say the RBS British pupils were "formidably technically assured". I did notice in the photograph of the two dancers - an angle no doubt carefully chosen by the photographer - was a poster advertising Anna Pavlova, the great Russian ballerina...

Gosh... That's a shocker.

The Russian companies are starting to open up to Westerners. An American girl, Keenan Kampa, has recently joined the Mariinsky, and there's another with Eifman Ballet in St Petersburg.

That's great! I could only dip in and out surreptiously yesterday because I was at work! Are those three videos on the Guardian website new or have they been around for some time?

Kitschqueen_1, what I was actually thinking of was called the Paul Hamlyn Club, and not the Hamlyn Performances. I've posted a link to an article about it today on the Performances and General Discussion forum. Unfortunately, the club doesn't exist any more!

OK, final update on this. The Paul Hamlyn Club is no more. Here's a link to a 2011 article about the scheme, for anyone who's interested in it. http://www.phf.org.uk/news.asp?id=1311

The Hamlyn Club tickets were never exactly publicised, although the Hamlyn Performances were. To get the Hamlyn Club seats you had access to a different area of the ROH website. I'm referring to five years ago now, so things might have changed. From what I remember, the Hamlyn Club tickets were less than £20 in the £55+ seats, perhaps even £12. The original Hamlyn Performance tickets came through DD's primary school. I could be misremembering this, so I'd be interested to know what the current set-up is, if any!

A mini-discussion on the Doing Dance forum has made me wonder if the Hamlyn tickets are still available at the ROH. Perhaps someone will know. I've used up my allocation but the information may be useful to someone else! We attended a Paul Hamlyn performance a few years ago. After the performance, by the doors there were tables with leaflets on asking for feedback - "Was this your first performance? What did you think? Would you come to see something again?" etc. If you sent the form back you could gain free membership of the Hamlyn Club, I think it was called. This enabled you to get very highly subsidised tickets for further performances for both ballet and opera over the next, I think, three years. You could see six performances a year of all types of productions (I'm a little hazy on the details here!) There were a block of seats that were reserved for Hamlyn Club members, though there weren't many seats, perhaps 12 or 20. I found it very difficult to negotiate my way round the ROH website in order to gain access to the Hamlyn tickets, and in fact in the end I had to email them to ask how to do it. But they were there, and I went to the ROH lots of times, seeing things I never would have planned to see, or could have afforded to see!

I could easily be behind the times re the Paul Hamlyn productions and subsequent discounts. It was a few years ago I'm talking about too. Perhaps they don't do them any more.

Anjuli, you sound like a marvellous teacher! Some of the things you describe are how it's done in DD's school too - group trips to see the live screenings of ballet at the cinema, visits to the ballet, DVDs to watch, suggested Youtube videos to study to compare how dancer X and dancer Y do the same variation, or the differences between company X and company Y. Spanner, the Royal Ballet needn't be expensive. We used to have free or highly subsidised tickets through the Paul Hamlyn Foundation - you need to see a Paul Hamlyn family production first, which are invitation-only events for non-traditional ballet audiences, then you become a member for, I think, three years. But otherwise you can see the Royal Ballet for a tiny amount of money if you sit high up in the slips - and don't mind if you can't see all the stage!

I believe that's right, although I have heard varying reports over how much ballet she was doing beforehand, but two to three classes a week, it seems to have been. I think she also did some of the RAD vocational exams too. Those of us without children at vocational school, including myself, like to focus on her story because it's just so magical!

Aileen, Patricia Zhou might have been a late starter, but she trained at the vocational world-famous Kirov School in Washington and is also a Prix de Lausanne winner. Melissa Hamilton went into the RB after she won the Youth America Grand Prix. This is how good young people have to be!

I think sometimes too when talking about schools like Paris Opera or the big Russian schools, we mustn't forget that as well as hand-picking youngsters for their perfect physiques, etc, and perhaps the better training they receive, they also cull them drastically from year to year. Those that actually graduate are only a tiny fraction of those who started in the schools in the first place. Of the Paris Opera pupils, again, only a tiny number actually make it iinto the company. The Russians that graduate with the big Russian schools are likely to get jobs, though not necessarily with the big companies, and most will spend their dancing lives unknown, working in the corps. The "superstar" dancers we've all heard of are superstars because they are just so rare! I know I've mentioned this before, but companies need people who will pay to watch ballet. Then our dancing children stand a better chance of getting a job, any job, with a contract lasting more than 12 weeks! Perhaps then even new companies could start up and thrive. I've sometimes thought it's a bit like the thousands of youngsters wanting to be journalists and envision themselves with a column in a national newspaper. But when you ask them if they ever buy a newspaper...

I think it is generally believed that ballet training before the age of, say, eight or nine, doesn't really count. Before that age what children are learning are "music and movement" skills. My own child started ballet after this age, and nobody has suggested this should hold her back. The big Russian schools start ballet training at age ten, so it's similar to the age 11 that the vocational schools take children in the UK.

Spanner, I think that's the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance. Aurora, it might be surprising, but more than a few young people who have spent five years at vocational school quit the ballet route altogether at 16!

The 10,000 hours get a lot of mention at DD's dance school too. Re overseas dancers: I seem to remember an interview with the RB principal dancer Laura Morera who joined the Lower School from Spain, in which she said that she had been going to ballet class after school from 6:30 till 10 every night and all weekend -all before the age of 11... Although she added that she thought if she had continued at this level of intensity, no doubt she would have broken something!

I'm just popping in and out on this interesting topic, as I'm at work at the moment! I suspect on other ballet forums around the world people will be having the same discussion - "Why aren't our dancers getting jobs? What are we doing wrong in our system of training? What are they doing better in Europe/America/Japan, etc?"

The Royal Ballet Upper School is, I think, the only British school with a 100% employment record. But it is not only the top British school, it is a top international school as well, so they can take the very best of the very best. Getting into the Lower School is clearly a good start for British children, but otherwise it seems to me, you will have to have been spotted at a summer school (not necessarily the RBS's own summer school), placed highly at an international competition like YAGP, or perhaps taken in from SAs. Glowlight is right - children from abroad can and do study much more intensively than is normal in the UK. I was quite shocked when I discovered how much other children are doing, especially in America. I think most British local ballet schools couldn't possibly offer the sort of schedules and classes that seem quite normal there. Also, in the US, even if you're not at vocational school, home schooling for talented children (not just in ballet) is much more common, enabling youngsters to put in huge numbers of hours at the studio.

Out of the three dancers Spanner referred to, only one (Leanne) went to vocational school at 11. Lauretta Summerscales went to ENBS at 16, and Melissa Hamilton to Elmhurst at 16, famously lasting only a year before finding a private teacher. What happens to all the children who do get into vocational school at 11? There are so many young people training in ballet and there just aren't enough jobs for them all to go to. Enjoying doing dance isn't enough. You need people who are willing to pay to watch dance too; then companies will thrive and grow. I've often wondered if all our dancing children actually like to go and watch ballet. Do we support our local and national companies enough? Northern Ballet are running a "sponsor a dancer" campaign. Will this be successful?